Chantal Bharosa

Lead and optimise the 24×7 Security Operations Centre (SOC) for South Africa, driving threat monitoring, incident response, and cyber defense operations across enterprise clients.

• Directed the complete restructure of the South African SOC team, improving operational efficiency and collaboration.
• Integrated a new email security service (Ironscales) within one month, ensuring seamless protection and onboarding.
• Mentored and developed analysts to achieve multiple cybersecurity certifications, strengthening SOC capability.
• Defined and standardised playbooks, SOPs, and escalation matrices aligned with MITRE ATT&CK and NIST frameworks.
• Provided executive-level reports on incident trends, threat landscape, and SOC performance metrics.

Managed 24/7 NOC operations ensuring availability, resilience, and incident resolution across national infrastructure. Collaborated with security teams on emerging cyber risks and response coordination.

• Led a team of engineers in monitoring and resolving critical incidents impacting core and transmission networks.
• Introduced structured fault management processes and proactive monitoring that reduced downtime and escalations.
• Partnered with cybersecurity counterparts to strengthen network protection and response alignment.
• Championed staff development through KPI frameworks, mentorship, and performance appraisals.

Proven leader in establishing and enforcing processes and procedures for NOC teams, subcontractors, and clients to ensure operational excellence and service quality. Skilled in developing reporting templates to track faults, maintenance, and installations, while ensuring strict adherence to SLAs and customer service standards. Experienced in escalation management, risk analysis, and decision-making to align with business objectives. Adept at creating and revising contingency plans, optimising site environmental and access tools, and overseeing effective financial management.

• Experienced leader in managing and developing teams responsible for the operation and maintenance of regeneration sites, ensuring optimal use of resources across contracts. Skilled in strategic planning to build and maintain required skills and competencies, while ensuring compliance with industry standards, maintenance procedures, and labour relations.
• Proven ability to analyse risks, make sound operational decisions, and implement contingency plans to support business objectives. Adept in effective financial management, delivering high-quality services in line with SLA requirements, and maintaining strong customer relationships to uphold service excellence.

Hands-on experience in the operations, maintenance, and integration of TP500 and TP5000 synchronization equipment within live network environments. Skilled in delay variation testing on both traffic and non-traffic sites, troubleshooting, and performing acceptance testing. Provided support to the planning department on synchronization-related aspects and conducted installations to ensure seamless network integration and performance.

Experienced in operations and maintenance of RNC 2600 equipment, with strong troubleshooting skills and the ability to develop structured troubleshooting schedules for field engineers. Provided support to change management processes to ensure smooth implementation and minimal service disruption.

Proven experience in ensuring 24/7 network availability through effective incident management, rapid failure recovery, and structured escalation procedures. Skilled in managing team shift plans, vacation rosters, and encouraging staff development through targeted training initiatives.

Adept at coordinating planned works, performing standby and call-out duties, and maintaining operational quality through regular alarm log backups, ticket quality checks, and fault update notifications. Experienced in producing detailed post-mortem analyses and weekly incident reports to support continuous improvement in network reliability.

Extensive experience in transmission maintenance and network quality management, ensuring optimal network and transmission availability. Skilled in reviewing NMC shift reports, monitoring alarms via NetViewer/TNMS, and responding to transmission faults within SLA.

Proficient in troubleshooting, maintaining fault equipment logs, and coordinating with First Line Maintenance or dispatching technicians when on-site intervention is required. Experienced in creating cross and port connections for customer service paths, escalating unresolved issues to the appropriate teams, and producing service performance logs for analysis and reporting.

Skilled in monitoring customer services across long-haul optical fibre networks using Siemens TNMS (Telecommunication Network Management System). Experienced in troubleshooting and resolving faults within SLA, coordinating with First Line Maintenance, and dispatching technicians when required.

Proficient in creating cross and port connections, provisioning services based on available network resources, escalating complex issues, and maintaining accurate trouble ticket updates for customers. Adept at re-routing traffic during link failures, performing regular configuration database backups, and extracting power readings and performance logs for network health monitoring.

Completed various technical training courses and performed acceptance testing and commissioning of Surpass HiT 7070 transmission equipment, ensuring proper functionality and compliance with network standards prior to deployment.